Writing on the Double Yellow Line

Militant moderate, unwilling to concede any longer the terms of debate to the strident ideologues on the fringe. If you are a Democrat or a Republican, you're an ideologue. If you're a "moderate" who votes a nearly straight party-ticket, you're still an ideologue, but you at least have the decency to be ashamed of your ideology. ...and you're lying in the meantime.

Sunday, May 21, 2017

I Know Why the Caged Libertarian Chirps

I receive far too many rations of shit from my fellow libertarians for pointing out things that President Cheeto is doing to further libertarianism. Specifically, he is reducing government regulatory intrusion into business, he is calling out the corrupt and disingenuous press, and he is doing his damnedest to throw a monkey wrench – albeit incoherently at times [like, all the time] – into the unelected bureaucracy that actually runs everything political in this nation. The Swamp, the Deep State, whatever you want to call it.The rations of shit I receive go like this, “Yabbut, yabbut … he’s not a libertarian – you have no grounds to support him!”I never claimed, nor have I ever implied, Donnie Combover to be a libertarian. He is libertarian only to the degree that libertarian ideals are not inconsistent with his own priorities. I’ve simply acknowledged that some of the things he’s doing are in our favor. Until libertarians stop gazing into their navels and create a cogent, coherent political philosophy that deals with reality in a manner that large numbers of our fellow citizens can accept, the only way libertarians will get any part of their philosophy enacted is by such coincidence. As long as Trump is doing those things that I – and we – favor, I will acknowledge that he’s doing them. …as should every other libertarian, frankly. Intellectual honesty counts for something.The next ration of shit I am attempted to be force-fed is, “Yabbut, yabbut … he’s doing X, Y and Z that are very very anti-libertarian!!”No kidding, and when the subjects of X, Y or Z come up – as they have many times – I will be found among the libertarians criticizing his policies or other efforts. To be honest, I will criticize those efforts substantially more intelligently than most other libertarians can muster, judging by what I’ve seen from fellow libertarians. For I will criticize those policies, whether directly from him or from those in his administration, consistent with libertarian philosophy, and not from a position saturated with personal desire.Case in point: the caterwauling over the directive given to federal prosecutors to advise mandatory minimum sentencing laws be invoked once more upon drug offenders. We had just gone through an eight year hiatus from those laws under the Justice For Sale Barry Hussein administration. I will say once again: the Attorney General does not have a legitimate luxury of picking and choosing which laws he will enforce, contrary to what Shyster Generals Holder and Lynch claimed. The Executive branch is the law enforcer, not the law maker, nor the law reviewer. If laws are stupid, then it is the legislature’s obligation to correct them. If laws are unconstitutional, then it is the courts’ duty to nullify them. I understand that mandatory minimums are stupid but, libertarians, please remember what political philosophy you claim to support. Stop justifying a government that does what it wants despite the rules it must follow.

Besides which, because the nation is now beginning to wake up to the dual realities that mandatory minimums are stupid, and that drug prohibition in general – and marijuana specifically – is stupid AND not a legitimate federal power in the first place, the draconian enforcement of mandatory minimums on drug offenders may just push enough of our major-party fellow citizens out of their statist stupors to support a widespread correction of the matter. But in the mean time, let’s pretend we’re better than idiot liberals.

It’s often at this point of the conversation that I point out that among the non-libertarians are both Ron and Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and Justin Amash. They, also, are simply doing a few things that lie coincidentally in the direction of libertarian ideals. These individuals are simply more libertarian than, say [and my apologies for once again picking on liberal democrats], Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Chuckles Schumer, John McCain, Lindsey Graham …

But libertarians they are not. If Rand Paul were a libertarian, he would not continually sponsor tepid legislation that would permit the courts to ignore mandatory minimums if, like, no one had a problem with it, or anything. He’d instead sponsor a law that would completely rescind mandatory minimums. And he’d also sponsor legislation taking drug criminalization out of the hands of the federal government and its unelected DEA dictators.Similarly, if Justin Amash were a libertarian he wouldn’t be playing into the hands of the Deep State swamp by enabling the swamp’s frantic histrionics over a political outsider threatening the Deep State’s unelected way of life. Libertarians who are libertarian are noticing that “the appearance of impropriety” is suddenly an impeachable affront to our form of governance when it has never been before.Libertarians who are not libertarian, though, are lauding Amash for having the principle to acknowledge that the corrupt FBI director being fired for being corrupt looks bad enough to be impeachable, so therefore it is. It looks bad because the corrupt FBI director was in charge of the agency investigating the allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to swing the election to Trump. It becomes “Obstruction of Justice” – i.e., inappropriately using the influence of the position of President to sway the activities of others.Those investigations are continuing. Firing Comey didn’t even provide a speed bump to them. The “looks bad” argument is thus unsupportable. No justice was obstructed there nor, by the looks of it, will it ever be.Russia could not have swung the election by any illegal means in the first place. Everyone with at least two brain cells to rub together in sentience understands this … which necessarily excludes most liberals. The Deep State swamp understands this as well, but they’re too busy whipping up their insentient supporters to care.For the record, the only two ways of illegally swaying an election are as follows:1] Rig the vote-counting mechanisms so that 2+2=5 in Column A but 2+2=3 in Column B. This did not happen; all precinct totals were tallied multiple times and – thanks to Jill Stein – tallied once again just to make sure. AND2] Create individual votes that do not belong, or alter individual votes after they have been cast. Because the US no longer uses paper ballots, altering votes after they are cast is simply impossible. But it is very possible to create votes that do not belong … by voting multiple times under false names, or in multiple locations. I don’t think I need to remind anyone of which political party does not wish to have Voter ID laws to reduce the occurrence of improper voting…

No. If Russia did anything, it was to serve as a conduit for, or even instigator of, political espionage that made internal democrat party data public. …data that made Hillary “Medusa” Clinton look like the manipulative, drunken, corrupt, vile-tempered shrew she is. Data that pointed out who manipulated her own party’s primaries to the dismissal of the socialist twit Bernie “Trotsky” Sanders. In other words, if Russia did anything at all, it did what a free and independent press would have done to the democrats, just as they had been doing to the republicans, were there a free and independent press in the United States to do it. But of course there isn’t, because they are corrupt and disingenuous as all libertarians understand.Nonetheless, the libertarian hero, Justin Amash, abets the corrupt and manipulative unelected Deep State swamp by signing onto their frantic hyperbolizing about the “looks” of impropriety. And he is called principled for doing so.

Yet where was Amash during the Barry Hussein administration when Barry impropriously attempted to manipulate a federal court reviewing his Obamacare, by claiming that courts do not have the Constitutional authority to review legislation for constitutionality? The answer is: he was in Congress saying nothing about it. He was especially not saying that Barry Hussein’s infantile challenge to the federal courts was a bad looking attempt at Obstruction of Justice at least as onerous as Trump firing the corrupt and mealy-mouthed FBI director Comey. Amash didn’t have principles at this point.Where was Amash during the Barry Hussein administration when Barry created, and validated, a treaty with Iran to the exclusion of the Senate which is Constitutionally required to ratify all treaties prior to their validation? The answer is: he was in Congress saying nothing about it. He was specifically not saying that the Iran deal was a thorough subversion of the Constitution by power manipulation and thus comprised an actual threat to the republic. Actual power manipulations are significantly greater than the mere appearance of power manipulation. Amash didn’t have principles at this point either.Where was Amash from the winter of 2015 to the late summer of 2016 when Medusa was found with tens of thousands of emails from her days as Secretary of State sloughed off onto a private, unsecured computer server hidden in her bathroom, among which were hundreds of classified conversation threads and – significantly more damning – evidence that the Clinton Foundation was selling foreign policy considerations to the highest foreign bidder, to be delivered upon the election of Medusa as President? Answer: he was in Congress saying nothing about it. Still no principles to be found in Justin Amash.Where was he when Medusa’s husband, Cuckold Bill, visited Barry Hussein’s second Shyster General, Loretta Lynch, who was in charge of investigating the mishandling of classified information by ex-government officials … to “talk about grandchildren”? By coincidence, or not, it was immediately afterwards that any meaningful investigation into Medusa’s classified data problem and her sale of future US foreign policy was dropped onto the lap of the same corrupt FBI director Comey. Amash was in Congress saying nothing about it. Still no principles.Where was he when the corrupt FBI director Comey invented a brand new caveat under the “mishandling of classified data” laws saying that even though Medusa did in fact violate the same laws that hundreds of normal people are in prison for violating, and thousands more have permanently lost their clearances and can never hold a job for the government again, somehow, because Medusa did not “intend” to violate the law, there was no prosecutable violation of the law? He was in Congress saying nothing about it. A continuation of no principles.

If Amash – not to mention his libertarian acolytes – wish to claim that holding our government officials’ feet to the fire in the face of appearance of impropriety is a libertarian principle, I will eagerly agree. Government officials in a free society are required to be beyond reproach. …whether they are elected, appointed, or hired … But Amash did not realize he had a principle on this subject until Trump fired the corrupt FBI director for being corrupt.

The sad fact of the matter is, there isn’t a government official whose actions are anything but reproachable. This includes Amash, Massie, either of the Pauls – and certainly includes Trump, his imperious authoritarian predecessor, and his drunken, psychotic challenger.But Amash doesn’t stand on principle, here. He forfeited any claim to principle when he sat idly by during the reign of Barry Hussein silently watching the guy, and virtually everyone under him, abuse their power. I do not accept that Amash suddenly found Mises and became a born-again libertarian. Anyone who claims Amash is acting to further libertarian philosophy for any reason other than coincidence is delusional. Amash is furthering libertarian ends only insofar as they are not inconsistent with his own priorities – which in this case is significantly more consistent with protecting the Deep State swamp.

Except for protecting the Deep State swamp, he’s not much different from Trump.